What it does
Paste text, type what to find and what to put in its place, and every match is replaced as you type. The count underneath tells you how many were changed, which is often the number you actually wanted to know.
The options
- Match case — off by default, so Colour and colour are both found. Turn it on when the difference matters, such as replacing a variable name.
- Whole words — stops cat from matching inside catalogue. Uses Unicode letter and digit boundaries, so it behaves correctly with accented text.
- Regular expression — treats what you type as a pattern rather than literal text. An invalid pattern says so rather than silently doing nothing.
Regular expressions worth knowing
| Pattern | Finds |
|---|---|
\s+ | Any run of whitespace — replace with a single space to normalise spacing |
^\s+ | Leading whitespace on a line (with the multiline behaviour this tool uses) |
\d+ | Any run of digits |
\(.*?\) | Anything in round brackets, shortest match |
(\w+)@(\w+) | Two captured groups — refer to them as $1 and $2 in the replacement |
In the replacement field, $1, $2 and so on insert captured groups, and $& inserts the whole match. To insert a literal dollar sign, type $$.
Chaining replacements
Use as input moves the result back into the input box, so you can run a second replacement on it. That is usually easier than trying to write one clever pattern that does two jobs.
Common questions
Is my text uploaded?
No. The replacement happens in this page, which matters if you are scrubbing names or keys out of a file.
Can I replace across line breaks?
Yes, with a regular expression — \n matches a line break.
Nothing is being replaced.
Check whether Whole words is on and your search term is part of a longer word, or whether Regular expression is on and your text contains characters like . or ( that have a special meaning. With regex off, everything you type is treated literally.
